32 ner-what I thought was causing all of his accidents. I said I didn't know, but I couldn't believe it was just co- incidence anymore. "No," she said, "I think he's expecting things to go wrong. There's something in the way he walks, I think. Maybe the eyes-I'm not sure what." Then she said what we were both really think- ing, a talent of hers. "I believe it's his way of dealing with the miscar- riage. " She waited for my reaction. 1 didn't like the word "miscarriage"; I thought it laid the blame on me, as though I had mishandled my own uterus. 1 in- stantly felt a powerful urge to tell her my dream, though-to explain what had really happened and to hear her ad vice When I was still quiet she asked, "How about you? Any of your own self-punishment? Any feelings of guilt?" There was empathy in her voice, nothing accusing or patronizing. I had given up comparisons to my own mother a long time ago, but there were still moments of envy. "I don't know," I said. "There's guilt, sure. Sometimes I wonder how much we really wanted a baby. You know we never planned to have any." "Yes. " I wanted to tell her; the whole dream was there, and until that moment I hadn't realized quite how heavy it was for me to carry alone. My fa- ther had certainly been no help. But the truth was I really didn't know this woman as well as I sometimes pretended to. I was afraid of her reac- tion, and maybe a little selfish about the dream by now. I said, "Tanner thinks it was all for the best, that maybe we weren't ready for her." "It was a girl?" I was momentarily shocked-l had never thought twice. "1 guess so. In my mind it was." We both heard Tan- ner's car come up the driveway. She said, "I hope you won't feel I'm butting in if I tell you this: no one JANUARY 14, 1991 imagined that I could see the waves of Tanner's even breath, the way I have sometimes seen the landscape of music. 1 let myself fall into the ebb and the flow, but there was still the loneliness. And the distance. I had been in this country for a long time, two years of high school and into college, with the phone calls and my mother weeping and the letters full of affection and guilt, before I understood that the dis- tance was inside me, that it was me. She told me that when 1 was born she had an idea; she claimed it came to her in the painful moments of my birth, when nothing else could get through: she saw before her each year of my life, each its own instant, a rapid film from birth to death. She saw that I would live long, that I would age well, with a straight back. The first birthdays I don't remem- ber, of course, though I have seen the photos. They dressed me in a silk ki- mono-royal blue, a new size each year. My parents were not wealthy when I was young, and this was an unusual extravagance. By my thir- teenth birthday, the robes were hang- ing in their own closet-a rising sea of blue-each worn only once. In the earliest years that I can recall, when I was five and six, there was expectation and excitement. Before dawn my mother would come with a candle, and the new robe folded over one arm, and a wide smile-a rare gift. Together we dressed me in the thick whispers of the fabric and in our cere- monial silence. Her hands moved continuously- straightening, creasing, . cuppIng, nervous. My father would have the camera ready on a crude stand-they count- ed floorboards to be sure of the distance. I stood be- fore the screen that had come from a fisherman in my mother's village, three generations before her. It was a dream: the carp leapt from the river and danced, each tree held its own moon. My shoulders back, arms by my sides, I stared straight into the camera. When I was positioned, is ever ready, Jun-Hee. It's the people who think they're ready who end up in trouble. You should try again. Tanner told me what the doctor said-that it was an isolated thing-and 1 think the best way for both of you to get over this is to try again. You'll have a perfect child this time." The front door opened and Tanner came in, wiping his feet on the mat. I was thankful for his timing, because I didn't know what to say. He held up a plastic bag with a quart of ice cream inside. "Mint chocolate chip," he an- nounced-it was my favorite. T HAT night we slept together in the twin bed that had been Tanner's since childhood. Each time we slept over, we both went through the shifting positions that I remem- bered from the nights we'd spent to- gether in college: lying close and en- tangled at first, separating slowly as our limbs became numb and sleep began to feel more important than intimacy, fi- nally dividing the narrow bed into individual spaces, like children in the back seat of a car. Tonight I found myself unable to sleep. I lay with my back to Tanner and my cold feet tucked beneath his calves. The shades on the windows were pulled, and they gave the darkness of the room a depth and a texture. I 4 ....... - r - ,/ ( Ø{ efc::; " "Dear H. & T. Plumbing Company: Thank you so much for the handy little desk calendar for 1991 What a thoughtful and useful gift."